England Women Cricketers’ Visit A Great Success

England Women Chance to Shine Ambassadors Visit

Leicestershire and Rutland Cricket’s Chance to Shine team were lucky enough to be joined by two members of the England Women’s team over the course of 3 days at the end of May.

Jenny Gunn and Danielle Hazell got involved in a variety of sessions in schools, ranging from curriculum-time session to after school clubs to leadership training. We would like to thank them for their enthusiasm and dedication

Primary School visits

Jenny and Danni visited two primary schools in Leicestershire, the Hall School and Newton Burgoland Primary.

Newton Burgoland braved chilly weather to get stuck into some fun games, while the Hall School were excited to welcome back Jenny and Danielle who had visited earlier in the year.

Secondary School visits

Crown Hills’ girls lunchtime club with Danielle (L) and Jenny (R)

Four secondary schools were lucky enough to benefit from meeting Jenny and Danni. All the groups who took part were girls only groups and it was a great opportunity for girls to enjoy themselves and be inspired by Jenny and Danni’s success to believe that they too could go on to achieve great things in sport, and in particular cricket!

The year 7 and 8 girls from the Martin High school enjoyed Jenny and Danni’s visit to their PE lesson, and when it came to the brief Q&A session at the end asked the key questions – where do you get to visit when you play and do you get to go sightseeing between games?! For the Martin High’s write up of the day visit their website here.

Hastings High girls practice their bowling.

Hastings High’s after school club had a great time playing a competitive game of pairs cricket, showing off their talent with both the bat and the ball to their internationally capped visitors, who definitely left impressed by what they saw.

Jenny Gunn with the Brookvale girls lunchtime club.

The girls from Crown Hills Community College and Brookvale High School’s respective lunchtime clubs buzzed with energy as the girls rattled through some great quick fire games, with some monster hits on display from not just the England women but plenty of the club members themselves, more than one ball had to be thrown back onto the court at Crown Hills, while some feared for the windows at Brookvale!

SEN Outdoor Festival

Jenny and Danielle also went along to the second half of the Syston Town Cricket Club Inclusive Festival, getting involved with some bowling and fielding during the games and also signing autograph sheets for every child who came along to the day. A full write up of the day can be read here.

Leadership and Training

Jenny and Danni also attended a Young Leader/Activator session at St Paul’s Catholic School in Leicester City. As some of the young leaders may help officiate primary kwik cricket games, we ran through the ways that batsmen that can be given out and also the signals an umpire may use. Jenny and Danni helped demonstrate the circumstances that the signals would be used.

The young leaders then learnt some new games designed to get beginners at their school into cricket, such as Kwik cricket, Indoor 24 and Cricket Rounders they will hope to use these games during lunchtime clubs or as a format for inter form matches. As the group of Year 9s will be delivering some coaching into the local primary schools they also learnt some fun games such as ‘3-bat’ continuous cricket and ‘Golden Child’. The young leaders set up and took part in the games to gain an understanding of the rules and how they should be run. It was great to see Jenny and Danni get involved and offer some advice from their own coaching experiences, especially Danni punishing anything short in the kwik cricket game!

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About Us

The Leicestershire & Rutland Cricket team is divided into two distinct delivery strands – Growth and Participation working towards achieving our vision of ‘Inspiring people to choose and enjoy a lifelong involvement in cricket’.
We are dedicated to promoting the game of cricket at all levels and work in partnership with a wide variety of professional and recreational cricketing bodies and other appropriate agencies within Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.